Science And Human Problems

As is well known to all, science is a typical phenomenon in our modern society. How to understand science is an important issue that many thinkers concerned about in 20^th century. John Dewey does a great effort in understanding science with particular ideas in his long lifetime, which makes a far-reaching influence. To study Dewey's theory of science and its significance has a great contribution to make out Dewey's philosophy, and we believe this will help us to understand our modern society nowadays as well as human's future.This dissertation mainly divides into three parts: In part one, "the background and platform of understanding science", by researching the controversy between philosophy and science, we provide a prerequisite for discussing science and view Dewey's new naturalistic empiricism as a platform on understanding science. In chapter one, "discrepancy between philosophy and science", we retrospect the history that philosophy fights against science firstly, and then disclose the original of "dualism" from this resistance. In chapter two, "new naturalistic empiricism", based on Darwinism's influence to Dewey, we analyze some fundamental characters of Dewey's new naturalistic empiricism and discuss how it overcomes the problem of "dualism".In part two, "understanding science", we understand modern science on three aspects such as "action", "instrument" and "technology". We state the revolution of modern science different from ancient science as a procession from "knowing" to "action", from "pursuing truth" to "pursuing utility" and form "by nature" to "by art". In chapter three, "modern science as inquiry", we consider modern science as an action of inquiry, and describe its character as "experimental". In Dewey's point, this uncovers the way modern science works. In chapter four, "modern science as instrument", we explain modern science based on instrumentalism, and disclose the aim to modern science researching is not "truth" but "utility". In this chapter, we mainly discuss Dewey's thought of "instrumentalism". In chapter five, "modern science as technology", we think modern science is a kind of technology, and we also believe the success of modern science is not "by nature" but "by art". Afterwards, we research the problem of "the disenchantment of the world" that technology causes. Moreover, we also discuss Dewey's particular attitude towards technology.In part three, "significance of science to human being", we mainly study the great significance of Dewey's theory of science to solve "problems of men" in modern society. In chapter six, "towards scientific humanism", through studying deeply "scientism" and "humanism", we conclude Dewey's thought to a new "scientific humanism". In chapter seven, "reconstruction in morality", Dewey establishes ethics of experimentalism on the basis of unification of "scientific judgment" and "mortal judgment". We emphasize that Dewey reconstructs traditional mortal theory by scientific spirit and method. In chapter eight, "science's position in modernity", firstly, we discuss that modern science plays an important role in democracy and education. And then, we further analyze Dewey's scientific spirit and method on the background of enlightenment. At the same time, we believe that intelligent scientific spirit and method of experimentalism have great contributions in the future of human beings. But we also think Dewey's experimentalism is not perfect yet.